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Lighten Up, Dude.

You ever play a game with someone who took it way too seriously? Me too. Lots of them, actually. I start to laugh when they freak out on me for sucking so bad, but it’s even better when I luck out and maybe do okay. That drives them over the deep end. One guy did it when we were out golfing, and I had already told him I was no good before we even went.

I guess he thought I was bluffing.

I wasn’t.

He ended up wrapping an expensive pitching wedge around a tree when I beat him on a hole, even though he was winning the game. I apologized for getting lucky, but it didn’t matter. He was mad, and now he was out $110 on top of the cost of the game. I laughed a lot at that one. We haven’t spoken since.

I think the best one was when I was playing in a little Texas Hold”em game over the holidays last year. We were all drinking beer except for Drew. He was a serious poker player. He played in all kinds of online poker tournaments for real money. He used a lot of lingo that I didn’t understand. Words like “turn” and “bad-beat”. He read books on poker all the time, and apparently won a bit of money at it. He was talking about going pro, but I don’t know if he ever did.

My definition of a bad beat.

I, on the other hand, think I have ADD, or something like it. I can play poker for about an hour, then I’m done. That’s the main reason that I only play games where you buy in $5-$10, and you play until you’re out. That way I know that I’m only losing a set amount of money.

Yes, I said I was going to lose. Hey, I’m a realist. I generally play hard for twenty minutes, then I shift it down a bit for another twenty, then I go all in until my chips are gone. It’s way worse when I’m drinking, which is usually when I play poker. Another thing about me is that I don’t bluff at all. This is something that I always tell people at the start of every game, but it usually takes a few hands before they believe me.

Drew took more than a few.

I remember someone asking me what I had, as a joke, and I told them. Everyone laughed, because they thought I was lying. When I put my cards down after winning the hand, Drew saw that I had actually told the guy what my cards were. I got a harsh scolding on how poorly I play poker. I was told that I should never tell people what cards I have, and I definitely shouldn’t grin like an idiot while saying “I got a really good hand that time.”

“But, I had a really good hand and I was excited.” I told him.

He then went on about etiquette and blah blah blah. I told him not to worry about how bad I am, and just take my money.

My next hand was really good too, and I told him so, but he still didn’t believe me. I ended up with a full house against whatever hand he had. (It was much less than a full house.) He got quite irate with me at that moment, but I just laughed. What else could I do? I told him that I had a really good hand, and I also told him I didn’t bluff.

It’s not my fault that he didn’t listen. He started telling me to stop playing like that, because it wasn’t the right way to play. He couldn’t figure out my “tells”. I told him that he just has to ask me what I have and I’ll tell him. By now there was only him, I, and one other not so serious player left. I was now just messing with him because I knew it was making him mad.

I think he’s napping.

It’s kind of shitty when you get a pissy-pants crybaby, whining because he doesn’t like the rules anymore. Here’s a grown ass man getting furious over a $5 buy in. The grand total of the pot was $45, so no one was getting rich off of it. He lost the last of his chips on my next all-in, and I split the pot with the other guy, just to get that game over with.. We gave old Pissy-Pants his $5 back, so he could go play in an online poker game with people who played the way he wanted, but he wouldn’t take it.

That was probably smart, because we would have never let him live it down.

I gave up gambling ’cause it’s such a shame, to cheat your friends and neighbors,

6 thoughts on “Lighten Up, Dude.”

I don’t mind players that are inexperienced, and I don’t mind players that are lucky. What I do mind is players who have no clue what they’re doing, but will argue that their idiocy (like calling all in with a 8-2 non-suited) is a smart move.

Oh my, it is so refreshing to hear a poker story from someone who doesn’t take it so seriously.

It’s funny, I saw it a lot when I played professionally, where guys would tell other players how poorly they had played hands, etc. And when you are playing professionally, you WANT people to play poorly, so I would always get mad at these idiots for berating the fish and either driving them away or showing them what they did wrong so that they are no longer fish. But on the other hand, by vocally telling the fish how he should have played the hand (aka how he would have played the hand), I now have a ton of information on him which I can exploit over and over again.